• “My whole foreign policy was based on the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run into serious trouble.”

     An Autobiography, 1913

    January 13, 2015

  • “I believe with all my heart that the American people are fit for complete self-government, and that, in spite of all our failings and shortcomings, we of this Republic have more nearly realized than any other people on earth the ideal of justice attained through genuine popular rule.”

     Columbus, Ohio, February 21, 1912

    January 6, 2015

  • “The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.”

     Sagamore Hill, New York, January 1, 1916

    December 30, 2014

  • “I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one between the ages of say six and fourteen, when the library door is thrown open and you walk in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairy land, arrayed on your special table?”

    The Supreme Christmas Joy, White House, Dec. 26, 1903

    December 23, 2014

  • “I do not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done.  Two or three determined Senators seem able to hold up legislation, or at least good legislation, in an astonishing way.”

     Letter to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, March 23, 1905

    December 16, 2014

  • “There must be the public opinion back of the laws or the laws themselves will be of no avail.”

     Washington, DC, December 3, 1907

    December 9, 2014

  • “I advocate genuine popular rule in nation, in state, in city, in county, as offering the best possible means for eliminating special privilege alike in politics and in business, and for getting a genuine equality of opportunity for every man to show the stuff there is in him.”

     St. Louis, MO, March 28, 1912

    December 2, 2014

  • “The men who have made our national greatness are those who faced danger and overcame it, who met difficulties and surmounted them, not those whose lines were cast in such pleasant places that toil and dread were ever far from them.”

     Galena, Illinois, June 17, 1912

    November 25, 2014

  • “This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”

    Memphis, Tennessee, October 25, 1905

    October 28, 2014

  • “Life is not easy, and least of all is it easy for either the man or the nation that aspires to do great deeds.”

     Speech in New York City, February 26, 1903

    October 21, 2014

  • “I have been Vice President, and I know how hollow the honor is.”

    Quoted by Lawrence F. Abbott in Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 1919

    October 7, 2014

  • “The greatest benefit to the people, I am convinced, is the enforcement of the laws, without fear or favor.”

    New York City, October 25, 1895

    September 30, 2014